Businesses facing third shutdown in less than a year

Retail groups blasted the shutdown as 'bewildering', while gyms and bars are just hoping they can survive long enough to reopen.

'We will get through this,' says Edward Finn of One Arena fitness centre/gym at 4 Swan's Nest Business Park, Pouladuff Road, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins

Bars, gyms, non-essential retail, and clubs of all kinds have resigned themselves to more pain as the Covid-19 crisis continues, with vaccines — now finally arriving en masse — seen as the only realistic way out of the stop-start nature of business.

The question for many will be simply managing to survive that long, they said.